Hmmm, I kinda like the combat model of just letting the guys fight each other and beat each other based on stats and a realistic fighting model. Kinda like the paradox games where the battles are fought without tactical interference from the player, just take into account the numbers, general stats, terrain bonuses and possibly troop quality. Or stuff like Football Manager series where you just tell your players what kind of stuff you want them to be doing and they try to win the game while loosely following your directions.
I do agree that this can be a fun way of doing things, I especially liked the battles in Dominions 3 where you could give orders, but only before the battle.
But that doesn't really seem to have been what Darklands was going for. The player did need to interfere with combat, quite often. Managing his units in combat was one of the biggest parts of the game. The player had a lot of stuff he to do in combat, it's just that the things he was doing weren't very challenging or interesting.
Instead of stuff like Total War series where you get to pretend to be tactical genius hundreds of times over. I mean is there really something exciting in pulling the same tactical tricks over and over and over?
I agree with you here, it seems like this is a common problem with games that include "tactical combat" but procedurally generate the battles. Usually the player can quickly figure out a few tricks that the AI can't handle and use them over and over.
Of course, there is a simple and effective solution, hand craft every map and hand place all opposition, so that the player is forced to unravel a puzzle designed by a human designer, not just kill some dumb AI with the same old tricks.
I guess I can't really see how they could have improved Darklands combat gameplay without converting it into an action RPG or making it a lot slower.
Well, look at Baldur's Gate 2's combat for an example for real time with pause* RPG combat done right. Of course, it's tough to translate BG2's success to a game like Darklands which has no magic, since magic is basically what makes BG2's combat work.
Still, Darklands could have included more detail in the melee and ranged combat systems (activated moves, etc) and introduced more prayers and alchemy potions that were useful in combat, etc. Since combat was one of the most significant parts of the game, they ought to have been considering from day one how exactly they were going to avoid having it become a clusterfuck.
Making something turn based doesn't always make it better, but using something more structured that real time with pause would probably have been a good idea for Darklands. Since they only had a few systems to work with (melee, ranged, alchemy, maybe prayers) they might have benefited from squeezing some more detail out of those systems. JA2 for example does fine without any sort of magic system or activated ability system at all. Melee is basically an afterthought too, but they made the ranged combat so good that the game still works.
Darklands had a lot of cool ideas in the endurance system, weapon vs armor system, etc. But they are partially wasted because the combat is such a clusterfuck.
* Sort of... it still has a round based structure, which is beneficial.
